Sales are all about overcoming customers’ resistance to buying. When spending money, people always measure the value for money. The value they assign to products in consideration is affected due to many factors; their uses, their budgets & needs, the reliability of the product & seller, and assumptions they hold about the product. Therefore, whether to buy something or not isn’t just a binary decision but a series of careful considerations of different factors, especially in the case of expensive products & informed buyers. And if customers cannot justify these valuing factors, they develop what concerns most sellers – buying resistance. Customers’ buying resistance is even more pronounced when purchasing online. Let’s see how you can overcome customers’ objections to ecommerce.
Establish a more interactive environment for customers
While ecommerce offers tremendous benefits over traditional commerce, many people are still attached to the latter. Why? Because the latter gives them more sense of control over the former. Physical stores allow customers to interact with both the product and retailers naturally – they can physically inspect the product and its quality, use the product, talk to the seller and get answers to their queries and connect with other customers. In light of this, ecommerce stores should also implement strategies that enhance customer interaction.
Chat support: With chat support, customers can get an immediate answer to their queries just like in a physical store environment. Additionally, customers can get personal advice from support representatives based on their requirements.
Enrich customers with information: Most purchase decisions are made not involuntarily but with consideration of the information the buyer possesses. With more information, customers feel more control over their purchase decision which drives their motivation for buying. On your website, provide relevant information about your products and company that matters to customers; include FAQ page, reviews, manuals, instructional videos of your products, etc.
Incorporate interactive tools on your website: Customers like physical interaction with products before buying. Since it’s not possible on an ecommerce store, you should include tools and features that allow customers to interact digitally with products – consider 360-degree product views, comparison tools, and product customization tools.
Forums: Forums are great for creating a sense of community among your customer base. Customers can share their product experiences & ideas, ask questions to each other and discuss their needs. Overall, forums create loyalty amongst customers and develop their interest in your store and products.
There are numerous ways you can increase customer engagement. Remember as customers interact more with your business, they feel more in control of the overall buying process and motivated.
Optimize your business
Online customers are often concerned with ecommerce stores meeting their expectations of a seamless shopping experience. Therefore, ecommerce stores should work on it by providing online customers with a frictionless experience.
Reduce order processing time: Customers like the instant gratification of possessing the product they buy almost immediately. While this is possible when buying in a brick-and-mortar store, processing online orders and their delivery takes time. However, you can improve shipping time by streamlining your operations and offering faster shipping methods to customers.
Look for errors: Data inconsistencies cost businesses significant losses every year. If your data is inaccurate, you risk delivering the wrong product quantity or even to a different address – this can impair your customer experience & your business reputation. Such errors mainly occur due to manual data inputs; however, integrating your webstore with ERP prevents such errors by enabling autonomous data migration.
Provide a smooth checkout experience: Enrich your webstore with tools that enable frictionless checkout for your customers – offer one-click checkout, repeat orders, guest checkouts, and other features that can make their checking-out process smoother.
Conclusion
Buying resistance is not a myth but a reality that matters as much for the retailer as the customers – both want a seamless trading experience. You can minimize it by transforming your webstore into a more engaging platform and streamlining your business.
x2xecommerce can help you in this domain with its solutions. With its solution implemented, you can integrate your business platforms for increased efficiency. Furthermore, the team at x2xecommerce can set up an engaging ecommerce store for your business. Reach out to the team for any queries or a free demo.